New Bluegrass Avatar!!!

[Mandolin Mick]

I thought I'd bite the bullet and just put up my license plate as my Avatar!!! Long live Bluegrass mandolin!!!
:)66695

[Rodney Riley]

Wondered what made blue cheese blue. Now I know;)

[Mandolin Mick]

That reminds me ... what do you guys think of a Wisconsin based Bluegrass band named Blue Cheese? :)

[Steve-o]

That reminds me ... what do you guys think of a Wisconsin based Bluegrass band named Blue Cheese? :)
:))

[Denny Gies]

That's a better band name than "Three Yankees and a Hairlip".

[Ivan Kelsall]

Rodney - You've almost come up with a song title - "..what made blue the cheese blue ?". Instead of 'Blue Moon of Kentucky',you could have "Blue Cheese of Wisconsin" ! - Way to go Mick !!,
Ivan:grin:~:>

[Al Bergstein]

I like "CheeseWis Blue"

[Mike Snyder]

Foi Grass is pretty cheezy.

[Ivan Kelsall]

Well,we've had the "String Cheese Incident",now we have the "Cheesy String Incident",
Ivan

[journeybear]

I don't get it. Is that Blue Graze? Blue Grease? Blue Gears? Blue Grizzlies? Stumped. :confused:

BTW, when I was going to school in WI, I had a hard time finding good cheese. I theorized that the good stuff was being exported for profit. Lots of small breweries, though, making great beer, back before the term micorbrewery existed, so that was a decent trade-off. ;) Plus a nearby larger brewer pumped out decent cheap stuff - $2 a case when you brought back the empties. Huber - it's house painting beer. :grin:

[Ivan Kelsall]

JB - If you do a 'Net search,you'll find that there are lots of really good American cheeses these days. Going back maybe 30 years,Cheddar was the most widely available cheese in the US,mostly because of it's ability to be stored over many months,it's versatility & transportability (is there such a word ?).
In some of the northern states (Wisconsin being just one),there are a great variety of cheeses made from recipes that were originally brought over from Europe by immigrants. Cheddar is originally from England,& is the most widely 'copied' cheese in the world,being produced in a great many countries. One of my favourite US Cheese varieties is 'Monterey Jack',fingers of which,breaded & deep fried are utterly devine !. Lots of folk think that 'Philadelphia Cheese' is just a 'brand name' of a soft cheese - not a bit of it. 'Philly' is a distinct US cheese variety in it's own right,& hellishly good.
The logo on Mick's # plate "America's Dairyland" is correct - more than half the cheese varieties available in the USA are made there,many more are made in California.
My home county in the UK, Cheshire, is a huge dairy farming county & one of it's products,Cheshire Cheese,is world famous.That's just 1 of 700 varieties made in the UK,& it's thought to be the oldest variety,being mentioned as far back as the 11th century.
Sorry to ramble on,but cheese is one of my favourite foods,
Ivan:grin: (Cheesey grin)

[Mandolin Mick]

JB

In Wisconsin you are only allowed so many letters on vanity plates so I couldn't fit Blue Grass on the plate. I used Blue Grz at my wife's suggestion. ;)

You were in Wisconsin many moons ago. Almost all fine grocers in Wisconsin now have a section of artisan cheeses. The best cheese, in Amereica, is still made in Wisconsin. There are outlets around and you just need to know where to look, kind of like the Wisconsin micro brewery beer you mentioned in a previous post. :)

Ivan

Whenever I'm in the UK, which is every year except last year, I love to eat your fine cheeses! I spend a lot of time checking out the different cheeses you have, in fact, here's a picture I took in London at Harrod's! :)

[journeybear]

You are both correct - My sojourn in Wisconsin was from 25-30 years ago, and surely things have improved since then. And I know you did what you could with the plate, Mick - I'll bet just about anything that your options were limited by previous plate owners using up the possibilities that incorporate S in the string of letters. I ran into that the one time I decided to get a vanity plate - had to go with the third entry on my list. It's the same process as choosing an online name when signing up for email and such.

Anyway, I knew all that - just having a wee bit of fun. :grin: And jonesing for a nice Triple Gloucester ...

BTW, not wishing to derail the train of thought, but ... Ivan, I have never heard of "Philadelphia cheese" as a term other than as a brand name, though you may have a different experience owing to geography. So to the wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cream_cheese) I go (never 100% authoritative), to find: "Philadelphia is used by some as a generic term for cream cheese." That seems rather vague, and is unsubstantiated, despite the author stating: "in Spanish it is translated as queso Filadelfia or queso crema" (this is in reference to a feature story (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/06/style/tmagazine/t_l_2170_2171_dish_creamcheese_.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1294150349-6bJfIbangsVwFG7sN6KbPg) in the NY Times). I think it speaks to the immense popularity and market share owned by the Kraft Foods brand name product with its distinctive packaging. I know there are other cream cheeses (such as Neufchâtel, Boursin, and Mascarpone), but I think - at least here in the colonies - when people say "cream cheese" this is what they mean. Kraft is crafty, and the packaging does say "Philadelphia brand cream cheese"; also, store brands just say "cream cheese."

And then there's American cheese, which I find an embarrassing product to represent this country in the world of cheeses :redface: despite it being perfect for certain applications.

Sorry - I have no idea how I ended up going on for so long. We now return you to your previously scheduled programming, already in progress ... :whistling:

[Rodney Riley]

Well,we've had the "String Cheese Incident",now we have the "Cheesy String Incident",
Ivan
:))

[Uncle Bob]

I don't get it. Is that Blue Graze? Blue Grease? Blue Gears? Blue Grizzlies? Stumped. :confused:

BTW, when I was going to school in WI, I had a hard time finding good cheese. I theorized that the good stuff was being exported for profit. Lots of small breweries, though, making great beer, back before the term micorbrewery existed, so that was a decent trade-off. ;) Plus a nearby larger brewer pumped out decent cheap stuff - $2 a case when you brought back the empties. Huber - it's house painting beer. :grin:

journeybear -

I was born and raised in southern Wisconsin (Janesville). Grew up on Huber beer - great price and a good drunk! I don't miss the winters but I do miss the cheese and the beer.

[journeybear]

Hey, Uncle Bob! Welcome to the Café! I went to Beloit, and the Huber brewery was a short drive to the west. Many a housepainting job began and ended with a trip to the beer store for a case or two. ;) One time we made a pilgrimage to the brewery in Monroe, which I see calls itself "the Limburger Cheese Capital of the USA."

[Willie Poole]

My license plate reads"F-5" and a lot of people ask me if that is my parking space number....I have had a few people beep at me that knew what a mandolin was....Willie

[AlanN]

I like that tag. I used to have F5MANDO, then MNDOLIN. On the latter one, I had folks come up to me and ask if I were a Miami Dolphins fan.

[Markus]

Nice plate.


BTW, when I was going to school in WI, I had a hard time finding good cheese. I theorized that the good stuff was being exported for profit.
That's changed a bit, thankfully the small-scale and artisan movement has helped a lot there - along with the many farmer's markets which have made good cheese available locally.

This works well with the WI cheese market, which has really expanded the variety of cheeses offered with lots of great specialty types. Honestly - it can be tricky tracking down `that one local cheese' with the amount of great product available ... we have favorite cheeses at the co-op, at the wine + cheese store, at both local groceries - and none of these are the same producers!

That said, the yummy stuff they make with the milk in April/May [when the cows are back in the fields, eating fresh clover sprouts] is difficult to find as it often goes for the pricey export.

[journeybear]

I like that tag. I used to have F5MANDO, then MNDOLIN. On the latter one, I had folks come up to me and ask if I were a Miami Dolphins fan.

Which could have been trouble if you were living in North Carolina. Folks in the South take their sports affiliations pretty seriously! ;)

BTW, Markus, it wasn't all bad. In my third year there I joined a buying club, which would send someone up to Madison once a week to buy nice things at the co-op or whatever it was up there. I only ever got cheese, and became pretty fond of Muenster for some reason. Grilled Muenster and mushroom with Worcestershire sauce sandwiches were a staple of the rest of my time there.

:popcorn:

There was a dairy somewhere in the area that would emit some pretty powerful sour milk aromas, especially on foggy or misty days, it seemed. Brutal.

[Mandolin Mick]

JB-

The only time I was ever in Monroe I toured a cheese factory! :grin:

[journeybear]

Now THAT is cheesy! New avatar possibility, hmmm? :)

[Ivan Kelsall]

JB - Re. the 'Philly' brand,you could be correct,although in one of the many books on Cheeses that i've read over the years,it was stated that 'Philly.'was a 'style' of Cheese,rather than a 'brand'. Maybe the one transmuted into the other for commercial reasons.
The ONLY time i've been close to a Limburger,(originally from Belgium,hi-jacked by the Germans & now made in many countries)i could have used a gas mask. I think that one was a bit over-ripe to say the least,
Ivan

[journeybear]

My dad loved Limburger, but my mom made him take it out back, behind the barn. Wonder if this was a factor in the divorce? :confused: